5 Famous Movies That Shamelessly Ripped Off Obscure Ones

So, Hollywood likes remakes, apparently. As much as we, the citizens of the Internet, like to complain about that, there's nothing wrong with the idea of a remake by itself. Some remakes are so good that they seem to completely erase all evidence of the original from our collective memories, as we've pointed out before.

Nope, sometimes the only problem with a remake is that they don't actually credit the obscure movie they are remaking (or, you know, pay them for the rights). Like ...

#5. Toy Story Is Suspiciously Similar to a 1980s TV Christmas Special

In 1995, Toy Story changed the world of animation by introducing kids to a little thing called CGI and launching Pixar's illustrious career. But on top of the technical achievement, it's also a great story. It's hard to believe that no one ever thought of doing a movie about toys coming to life before ...

The Original: The Christmas Toy (1986)

Nine years before Toy Story, ABC aired a one-hour TV special called The Christmas Toy. Like Toy Story, it stars a group of toys that come to life when no one is around, but the similarities go way beyond that. In The Christmas Toy, the main character is also a toy who grows insecure when he hears that his owner is receiving a present that could replace him as the favorite. Instead of Woody the cowboy doll, it's a stuffed tiger named Rugby.

Replace "Rugb" with "Wood" and prepare to have your mind blown.

But that could easily be a coincidence, right? Well, explain this: In The Christmas Toy, the new arrival and competitor for the owner's affection also turns out to be an egocentric character from outer space who has trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality and doesn't understand that it's just a toy -- her name is Meteora, Queen of the Asteroids.

Or Post-Op Buzz Lightyear.

Another character is a Barbie doll who at one point wears a Little Bo Peep outfit. By the way, Pixar actually wanted to include a Barbie doll in the first Toy Story, but Mattel turned down the proposal. So which toy did they use to replace her? Bo Peep, of course.

But that's just because lots of 7-year-old boys play with Bo Peep toys.

Then there's the worn-out stuffed bear with a cane who functions as the playground's wise old leader and is in charge of welcoming new toys, but there's nothing like that in the first Toy Story. Nope, the exact same character shows up Toy Story 3.

Apparently someone put him in the washer with some reds, though.

So if you've ever wondered why Disney hasn't done a Toy Story TV show (beyond the Buzz Lightyear animated series), it's probably because they already did that: Only a year before the first Toy Story movie came out, the Disney Channel aired a spin-off TV series about The Christmas Toy characters called Secret Life of Toys, but it was cancelled after 13 episodes.

How They Improved It:

"First" doesn't always mean "better." The Christmas Toy has a weird subplot where, if a toy is caught by a human, it becomes frozen forever ... which is kind of disturbing when you think about it, because it means that every time you found a G.I. Joe outside your toy box, you were actually killing it. Most of the movie is about Rugby's friend trying to save him from this horrifying fate.

Your Legos are silently screaming in eternal agony.

#4. Raiders of the Lost Ark Was Intentionally Based on an Old Charlton Heston Movie

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have always been open about the fact that the Indiana Jones franchise was inspired by the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. That's OK, though, because Indy himself is an original creation. It's not like they'd just lift a character from another movie and turn him into one of the most iconic action heroes ever, right?

The Original: Secret of the Incas (1954)

Here's a young Charlton Heston as cocky adventurer Harry Steele in the little-known 1954 film Secret of the Incas:

Not to be confused with Harry Steele the cocky porn actor.

Why, that looks remarkably like Indiana Jones, right down to the stubble. Coincidence? Not according to the woman who designed Indy's look in his first movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark. In an interview, she admitted that the crew watched Secret of the Incas several times, and said she's surprised that Lucas and Spielberg didn't credit the movie at all.

The similarities don't stop there. Remember the map room in Raiders where Indy does the reflected light trick to show the location of the hidden ark? Yep, they've got one of those here, too:

It was the "leaving the key under a fake rock" of the ancient world.

In the same scene in Incas, Steele is betrayed by his partner, who tries to steal the valuable artifact he's just retrieved at gunpoint, but he's saved by his Peruvian sidekick. Raiders simply merged both characters into the same one for the film's classic opening scene, which, like Incas, takes place in a temple deep in the Peruvian jungle.

Poor Alfred Molina might have survived if only he'd had a better poncho.

Then there's the river trip in a yellow inflatable raft, like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, followed by a campfire scene, also like in Temple of Doom.

Yeah, but does that one double as a parachute?

So wait, this movie stars one of the best-known lead actors ever in what's basically an Indiana Jones premake -- why isn't it better known? That might be because both movies are produced by Paramount, who has never bothered to release Incas on home video. Many fans, including Indy's costume designer, believe Paramount is just trying to hide the blatant ripoff.

How They Improved It:

Of course, there could be another reason why they haven't released Incas: The main character is a huge douchebag. Indy isn't the most cheerful guy in the world, but at least he didn't con women out of their money, then brag about it in front of them.

"Your tears arouse me more than you ever could." -- actually pretty close to real dialogue.

There's also the fact that the movie barely has any action, which Raiders compensated for by including all of the action.

#3. Alien Is a Mashup of Two Old B-Movies

In 1979, Ridley Scott's Alien reinvented the horror sci-fi genre by actually making a horror sci-fi flick that was scary (a novel idea in those days). Alien also added a refreshing dose of realism to the standard futuristic setting -- showing the space crew just sitting around a table, shooting the shit, was considered a huge deal.

And then Kane's chest boner had to go and ruin everyone's meal.

The Originals: It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) and Planet of the Vampires (1965)

This is from the 1958 sci-fi B-movie It! The Terror from Beyond Space:

The only difference is that back then space ladies knew their place, dammit.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves: The first half of Alien actually resembles a different B-movie, Planet of the Vampires, from 1965, which also stars the crew of a spaceship who are forced to land on a desolate planet, who also go off to explore the place and come across the remains of a crashed spacecraft ... and also find the corpse of some sort of mysterious giant alien inside.

"Hey, guys, I think I just tripped over some foreboding."

The planet itself is dark and foggy, just like the one in Alien, but what really gives it away is that the crew's stranded spaceship in Vampires is actually pretty similar to the abandoned one they find in Alien:

Ridley Scott's original idea to just use the Millennium Falcon was shot down.

In Vampires, the crew is stuck on the planet for most of the movie. In Alien, they lift off, unaware that they have accidentally picked up an alien stowaway who will start killing them off one by one -- which, incidentally, is the exact premise of It! In both movies, the creature hides in the ship's cylindrical ventilation shafts, killing the poor sap who goes after it.

"Take a lantern, that oughta take care of it."

Both crews try to kill their respective monsters by locking them in the airlock room to suffocate them. In It! the plan works, but in Alien the monster can actually breathe in space, so it takes Ripley kicking its ass out the door to get rid of the pesky thing.

"You coming into the shower, babe?"

How They Improved It:

As you can already guess, what sets Alien apart is the alien. True to old-timey B-movies, the monster in It! is just a guy in a cheap rubber suit. Meanwhile, in Vampires, we don't really see any living aliens: The crew has to fight their own reanimated dead friends who are possessed by evil space spirits. They look exactly like zombies trying to fight their way out of plastic bags.

"'Paper or plastic,' they said! 'Are totally reusable,' they said."

So, yeah, Ridley Scott revolutionized the genre by adding more psychological terror, but also by making it look like he spent more than $25 on the film.